Skip to content

Portrait of Toru Takemitsu

Toru Takemitsu

(1930–1996) Composer

11 quotes in 73 categories

Toru Takemitsu was a composer, best known for Toru Takemitsu - A String Around Autumn.

Quick Facts About Toru Takemitsu

Born: October 8, 1930
Died: February 20, 1996
Profession: Composer
Notable works: Toru Takemitsu - A String Around Autumn

About Toru Takemitsu

Tōru Takemitsu was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music and writer on music. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu was admired for his subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is known for combining elements of oriental and occidental philosophy and for fusing sound with silence and tradition with innovation.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Quotes by Toru Takemitsu

The art music of the West has developed through out its history by means of individual geniuses, and out of the soil…

Art

Image

I am a gardener of infinite time.

Gardener

Image

I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned.

Composer

Image

Music should be able to invoke the natural emotions in all human beings. Music is not notes fixed on apiece of paper.

Able

Image

Composition gives proper meaning to the natural streams of sound that penetrate the world.

Composition

Image

My teachers are Duke Ellington and nature.

Dukes

Image

Music is a form of prayer.

Form

Image

“Many contemporary composers have been building walls of sounds following their own clever devices. But then, who lives inside those rooms?”

Building walls

Image

Although I am basically self taught, I consider Debussy my teacher - the most important elements are colour, light and shadow.

Colour

Image

“...by admitting a new perception of space and giving it an active sense, is it not possible to discover a new unexpected,…

Space

Image

I always want to write erotic music... Not only about the love between men and women, but in a much more universal…

Love

Image